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The flash of red and sinuous shape may catch your eye first. An elegant and tactile cabin may hook you, but it is the throaty blare of its so-Italian V-8 engine that will ultimately gaff you and land you in the boat. The banshee wail issued by an 8C Spider is so captivating, it should be available for download. It will be among the smartest 99 cents you’ll ever send to iTunes.

Considering that this car that was conceived and designed only as a coupe (making its debut in concept form at the Frankfurt auto show in 2003), the 8C’s Spiderfication comes off superbly. Like a slightly shorter and curvier-than-average supermodel, there’s not a bad line to be found — and plenty of sinuous shapes to appreciate. Carbon-fiber body work bolts and bonds to a steel and aluminum tubular chassis. There’s additional bracing to compensate for the structural strength given up by the loss of its lid. While structural rigidity suffers by nearly 30 percent, the coupe was so strong to begin with that the Spider is a mostly body wiggle-free machine. Alfa bagged the notion of a retractable hardtop, citing high development costs, design compromises in the rear-deck area, and the more coachbuilt nature of a rich-looking soft top. Good call. Weight goes up by about 200 pounds.

The powertrain and just about everything else is carryover from the coupe. Underhood is the Ferrari-designed-and-built 4.7-liter V-8 offered in all current Maseratis. It’s backed by the same six-speed autoclutch manual transaxle that Maserati used to call Cambiocorsa. Power is 450 horses at 7000 revs, its 354-pound-feet torque peak shows up at 4750, and redline is 7500 rpm. The engine sits fully aft of the front axle, and the trans is forward of the rear diff, so the weight of the powertrain is carried inside the wheelbase. Weight balance is 50/50. The biggest functional difference is that the Spider gets standard carbon-ceramic brake rotors, something not available — optional or otherwise — on the coupe. Another unique feature is the light yet strong composite windshield frame. To the best of our knowledge, it’s the first such piece employed on a production convertible.

This is a car you’ll want to drive naked, because the cabin is a dazzling smorgasbord of sexy-yet-functional materials. You’re ensconced by multiple textures of Poltrana leather. The carbon-fiber bits are real. Alfa starts out with 100 pounds of aluminum for each 8C interior, then mills away 94 pounds of it to leave the pieces you see and touch. Each is then brushed, anodized, and finished. Everything that surrounds you is functional yet beautiful, with no gimmicks allowed. This environment looks and feels as if every bit of it were handcrafted. Because it is.

The 8C Spider isn’t a “numbers” car. A Ferrari 430 Scuderia, Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4, ZR1 Corvette, or Nissan GT-R will run away and hide. But its performance is still impressive, to say the least. The well-worn 8C Competizione coupe we tested ran 0 to 60 in 4.6 seconds, cornered at 0.94 g, and braked from 60 to 0 in 101 feet. A fresh Spider on good tires will be within a pinch and an inch of these numbers. What sets this macchina Italiana magica apart is the fact that its performance is so easily accessible — and how it makes you feel while doing so.

Although the Alfa folks point to all manner of its own prewar sports and racing cars as the 8C Spider’s influencers, it most reminds me of a modern-day version of the early 1960s Ferrari 250 GT Spyder California. That means classic front-engine, rear-drive roadster proportions. The lines are taut yet organic, and meld the notion of a sports/exotic sports car with those of a gran turismo. You don’t need to fold yourself into an inhospitable cabin, leave your luggage at home, or be beaten to death by a rock-hard suspension. This is a car you cannot only drive 500 miles a day on your favorite ocean/mountain/deserted road, but you’ll want to. And lest we forget that, prior to WWII, Enzo Ferrari was the kingpin of Alfa’s factory Grand Prix racing team. So the connection isn’t out of line.

Thumb the 8C’s starter button and the Maser-sourced V-8 lights with a subtle thrum. The trans is preprogrammed for Drive mode upon startup, although you can press the Auto on-off button if you wish full manual control via the steering column-mounted shifter paddles. We recommend hitting the Sport button before you roll, which opens up the baffles in the exhaust tract to let out the tunes. Sport also sharpens the throttle tip in, and further dials back the stability control. However, if you’ve had a long day or just prefer to cruise, the 8C is downright docile should you choose to motor with the trans in Auto/Drive, leaving the Sport button alone.

This engine has a lovely powerband. There’s a meaty serving of torque down low, it’s really cooking by 4000 revs, and pulls long, hard — and loud — until the 7500-rpm redline. Upshifts aren’t as aggressive as they are in the mid-engine Italian stallions mentioned above (which share a similar transaxle), but downshifts are things of beauty. They happen quickly and are accompanied by a Massa-quality, rev-matched downshift. You hear plenty of the engine and exhaust in the coupe, but you get it maximum strength in the Spider, especially with the top down.

There’s plenty of cornering grip and stopping power. All the controls have a meaty feel, although the steering could be more communicative. Body roll? Not much. Ride? Surprisingly compliant. Understeer? Hardly. Oversteer? As much as you want. Even in non-Sport mode with the stability system on, you can kick the Spider’s curvaceous butt out a bit with your right foot. Engage Sport and it’ll go farther. Turn the Stability system to full manual, and you can drift this thing around Eldora Speedway like a sprinter.

Some numbers talk of a different kind. As with the Competizione coupe, just 500 8C Spiders will be built. North America got 85 of them, bearing a sticker price of $265,000 (a handful remain). The Spider will be more rare, at least in our economically challenged hemisphere: We get just 35 this time around, and the tariff is increased to $299,000. The bump covers the costlier-to-make bodystyle and the race-inspired carbon brakes. Each 8C is made to order, with buyers having a host of choices in colors, leather surfaces, stitching, wheel finishes, and such. There are far more than 500 combinations, so unless one customer copies another’s car down to the last detail, it is likely no two examples will be identical.

If there’s a downside, it’s the fact that the 8C Spider isn’t equipped with the seven-speed dual-autoclutch manual employed in Ferrari’s new California. Alfa representatives are quick to point out that the 8C was engineered well before that transmission was and that its architecture was designed around the best available at the time. Another, more unspoken reason is that, since this new technology just came out in a Ferrari, it is not yet being offered to other Fiat group brands, such as Maserati and Alfa. After a decade of massaging, the single-clutch robotrans works well enough. But it’s too bad someone plunking down 300 large can’t enjoy the lightning-quick, super-smooth upshift response this new, high-tech gearbox offers. For this kind of lire, there shouldn’t be excuses or compromise.

As I drive the 8C Spider around Alfa Romeo‘s historic Balocco, Italy, proving grounds (where many Alfa street, race, and even F1 cars have been developed over the last four decades), I notice considerable tension in my facial muscles. Have I been squinting at the sun? A headache, perhaps? None of the above. My cheek muscles hurt because I’ve been smiling for so long. Timing my upshifts and downshifts for Balocco’s two tunnels and making sure I hit them at redline. Pitching the tail around a corner or two. Thinking I was hitting the powerful brakes too early…then having to accelerate up to the corner because they bled off speed so quickly. And of course, fanning the shifter paddles and playing the exhaust pipes as you’d use pedals to command a Wurlitzer pipe organ.

Eye-watering price or no, the 35 North American enthusiasts who end up with an Alfa Romeo 8C Spider in their Taj Magarage will have something rare and special in all the automotive world, not to mention owning the centerpiece of Alfa’s pending return to our marketplace.

2010 Alfa Romeo News and Reviews

2009 brought about nothing less than the comprehensive retooling of the transportation industry.Who's left? Who makes what? What's new? Relax. We've got your back...and as always, the only complete, model-by-model review of all the new hardware for next year and the following. Your comprehensive search begins here, with PART ONE of our guide. Stay tuned over the next month as…

Every year the rest of the world gets to pilot new cars we can only dream of driving on U.S. roads. From extreme exotics to highly-frugal minicars, they're built by automakers who either don't sell cars in America, of for some reason or another importation is an issue.Thankfully, there are more than enough offerings here that we can buy, and…

Long before you see the new Alfa Romeo 8C, you'll hear it. The Ferrari-based, 450-horse, 4.7-liter V-8 (a bored-and-stroked version of the 4.2 that serves in the Quattroporte) revs with a deep, resonant bellow-a guttural offshore powerboat to the Ferrari F430's high-pitched hydroplane. As it amplifies, the sound will chomp into your ears and spin your head around. And then…

The 8C has existed since 2003 as a show car; since then, this fabulous styling piece has acquired chromosomes other sporting machines would kill for. Ferrari designed the basic engine, which began as the 4.2-liter V-8 that serves in the Maserati Quattroporte. Bored and stroked to 4.7 liters, the 8C version also gets a dry sump and wears new Alfa…